This book looks at East Asian actors in the League of Nations to explore a pivotal moment in the early stage of the development of global international relations. It breaks new ground by drawing on extensive sources in East Asian languages to show how actors from the region played significant roles in shaping the emerging norms and practices that underpin the international system. The chapters cover cases from the three East Asian member states, namely China, Japan and Siam (Thailand) to address topics that involve the intersection of disciplinary fields, such as law and warfare, sovereignty and international organization, and public health and international co-operation. The research draws on new material that will be of interest to academic researchers and is presented in a style suitable for teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels, especially for courses that strive to achieve a global outlook and the decolonization of the curriculum.

Well-grounded on abundant Japanese language sources which have been underused, this book uncovers the League of Nations’ works in East Asia in the inter-war period. By researching the field of social and other technical issues, namely, the trade in narcotics, the trafficking of women and the work in terms of improving health provision and providing economic advice to Nationalist China, it not only examines their long-term impacts on the international relations in the region but also argues that the League’s works challenged the existing imperial order of East and Southeast Asia. The book offers a key read for academics and students of international history and international relations, and others studying Japan or East Asia in the twentieth century.

Asia After Versailles addresses an important but neglected watershed for Asian nations - the response to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The Conference marked the end of a conflict which, although intrinsically European, had globalized the world on many levels, politically as well as economically, culturally and socially. It also stood at the beginning of a new order that saw the power centre shift towards the US and Asia. Asian countries and people played a significant but so far largely neglected role in this momentous development. Bringing together an international range of experts in the history of China, Japan, India and the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, this pioneering volume demonstrates the importance of Asia in the multifaceted global transformations that revolved around the Paris Peace Conference and its aftermath. Traditional historical analysis focuses almost exclusively on US and European responses to the Paris Peace Conference and the interwar order and often fails to take into account non-western, particularly Asian voices - this is the first book to demonstrate the far-reaching Asian dimensions of the impact of Versailles in an unprecedented way making this an invaluable and interdisciplinary resource for academics and researchers in the fields of politics, international relations, area studies and history

This edited collection examines the effects of the Great War and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in East Asia. Contributors to this collection highlight how Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian groups and individuals actively sought to envision a global order in which the center of gravity lay in the Western Pacific, not the Northern Atlantic.

The "war on terror" has generated a scramble for expertise on Islamic or Asian "culture" and revived support for area studies, but it has done so at the cost of reviving the kinds of dangerous generalizations that area studies have rightly been accused of. This book provides a much-needed perspective on area studies, a perspective that is attentive to both manifestations of "traditional culture" and the new global relationships in which they are being played out. The authors shake off the shackles of the orientalist legacy but retain a close reading of local processes. They challenge the boundaries of China and question its study from different perspectives, but believe that area studies have a role to play if their geographies are studied according to certain common problems. In the case of China, the book shows the diverse array of critical but solidly grounded research approaches that can be used in studying a society. Its approach neither trivializes nor dismisses the elusive effects of culture, and it pays attention to both the state and the multiplicity of voices that challenge it.

"Wm. Theodore de Bary offers a selection of essential readings from his immensely popular anthologies Sources of Chinese Tradition, Sources of Korean Tradition, and Sources of Japanese Tradition so readers can experience a concise but no less comprehensive portrait of the social, intellectual, and religious traditions of East Asia."--

Using a case study based approach, Weissmann analyses the post-Cold War East Asian security setting to demonstrate why there is a paradoxical inter-state peace. He points out processes that have been important for the creation of a continuing relative peace in East Asia, as well as conflict prevention and peacebuilding mechanisms.